Police in Washington once investigated Bryan Kohberger after a college student reported a disturbing break-in involving a masked man armed with a knife who entered her bedroom.
The incident occurred on October 10, 2021 — eight months before Kohberger moved to Washington and enrolled at Washington State University. It also happened to coincide with a weekend event hosted by the university’s Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology for incoming and prospective students, according to documents released by the Pullman Police Department and obtained by PEOPLE.
Authorities began looking into Kohberger as a potential suspect less than two weeks after his arrest for the murders of four University of Idaho students in the nearby town of Moscow — just 10 miles away.
Details from the Pullman police report and the probable cause affidavit in the Moscow case describe remarkably similar circumstances: both suspects used the same type of weapon, targeted similar victims, and carried out the crimes under nearly identical conditions.
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A 20-year-old college student told police she was asleep when she woke to find a masked man with a knife standing in her bedroom.
PEOPLE has chosen not to identify the woman due to the nature of the crime.
According to the student, the intruder stood silently at the foot of her bed, apparently unaware she had woken up — until she kicked him forcefully in the stomach, prompting him to flee.
The woman’s roommate, who had a room on the same floor, later told police she didn’t see the suspect but did hear someone running loudly up the stairs. She called 911 after the shaken victim came into her room and recounted the incident.
Initial police leads failed to yield a suspect, and the case eventually went cold.
A potential breakthrough came over a year later, when Sgt. Christopher Engle opened an investigation into Kohberger on January 10, 2023.
The circumstances mirrored those of the Idaho murders — a nighttime attack inside an off-campus home shared by young women. In the Pullman incident, the house was occupied by four sorority sisters. The intruder, just like Kohberger during the Idaho attack, wore a ski mask and carried a knife.
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Dylan Mortensen, one of the two surviving roommates in the Moscow case, later told police that Kohberger was “clad in black clothing and a mask” the night he killed her four friends.
Additionally, both suspects reportedly entered their respective crime scenes through unlocked back doors.
Kohberger’s investigation in Pullman was short-lived. Nine days after it began, it was closed when a Graduate Program Coordinator informed Sgt. Engle that there was no record of Kohberger attending any official campus events during that weekend in 2021.
There’s no indication that investigators pursued whether Kohberger might have visited unofficially while he was still enrolled at DeSales University in Pennsylvania.
Kohberger completed his studies there in May 2022. By July, he had relocated to Pullman to begin his doctoral program.
He is now serving four consecutive life sentences in an Idaho maximum security prison for the murders of Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20.
